May 6, 2026. López Piñero Interuniversity Institute (Palau de Cerveró), Assembly hall.

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10:00 Maríaluz López Terrada: “Un espai renaixentista per a l’assistència pública: l’Hospital General de València”.

In this presentation, the General Hospital of Valencia during modernity will be analysed as a case study, understood from an open concept of culture and not reduced to a discourse of social construction, that is, as an institution where charity, assistance and politics exist. This hospital, like others during this period, must be seen as just another health resource, depending on the economic possibilities of the patient, but at the same time forming part of the complex healthcare panorama of the Modern Age, where the use of central figures such as the doctor, surgeon, healer or healer developed in a very different scenario. It should be borne in mind that in the period in question, a profound transformation of the hospital institutions that emerged during the Middle Ages took place throughout Europe. In general, there was a tendency towards the disappearance of small medieval institutions and the appearance of large centres where "general" assistance was provided. This evolution occurred as a result of the changes that arose throughout the West, including the emergence of the new monarchies, the growth of the population and the consequent increase in the number of poor, the processes of Reform and Counter-Reformation, which in turn influenced the existence of different models of hospital care, changes in medicine and treatment called morbo gallico) and the remission of others (such as leprosy).

10.45 a.m. Questions and discussion.

11.00 a.m. Josep M. Comelles: : “L’hospital contemporani i la identitat de la res publica local en la transició entre l’acollida i la terapèutica”.

Between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first century, the hospital system in the West has undergone a mutation from its cultural significance, between reception and diagnosis-therapy and its effects on the hospital.  The presentation will revolve around these transitions based on examples mainly related to the Catalan and Valencian cases but also with comparative elements.

11.45 a.m. Questions and discussion.

Speakers:

Josep M. Comelles (Barcelona 1949), is M.D.; M.A. (Philosophy and Letters); Ph.D (Medicine), Ph.D (Anthropology). Specialist in Psychiatry (Autonomous University of Barcelona). Professor of Social Anthropology at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV, Tarragona) since 2003, currently emeritus and distinguished professor. Founder of the Master's Degree in Medical Anthropology and International Health and the Doctorate in Medical Anthropology at the URV. Member of the Medical Anthropology Research Center of the URV. He has published about twenty books and two hundred book chapters and articles in his fields of specialization: medical anthropology, the history of science, anthropology, medicine and psychiatry, mainly, and visual ethnography and documentalism, which he has been developing for a decade.

Marialuz López Terrada (Valencia, 1960), studied Geography and History at the University of Valencia, where in 1986 she obtained her doctorate in History with the thesis El Hospital de Valencia en el sjglo XVI (1512-1600). From 1990 to 2015 she was a CSIC scientific researcher at the López Piñero Institute for the History of Medicine and Science (UV-CSIC), of which she was director for two years. He currently works at INGENIO, a joint research institute of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the CSIC. His work focuses on the social and cultural history of science in the Modern Age in three main lines. Firstly, to the historical study of medical cultures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, specifically in the field of the Hispanic Monarchy. She has published several studies on the history of hospitals, the control of medical practice, preferably in the Valencian area, and healthcare resources and the presence of extracurricular forms of medicine in the society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with special emphasis on the role of women as health agents in modern modernity. Also, as an approach to the medical cultures of the past, he has published different works on the representation of medicine in literature, particularly in the Spanish theater of the Golden Age. The second line of interest is natural history in relation to the discovery of America and the study of the process of introduction of American plants to Europe, in particular the tomato. Finally, he has worked on the creation of bibliographic catalogues and the edition of historical-medical sources